At the Helm #9 – Oddysee Old

Awesome Brews #7

January 10, 2016

Strategic Operations Division Report: 1-11-2946

January 11, 2016

//Welcome Back//

Hello to one and all! I hope your holidays were excellent and for those still on holidays stop living in the past! *Saltiness intensifies*. I’d like to start off by wishing everyone a happy new year! I hope everyone’s had an exceptional holidays and I and the rest of the administration would like to wish you luck and wellbeing for the coming year. This is a special at the helm for you all as it will outline our focus of self-sustainability in terms of infrastructure and ways of expansion for this year.

//Self-Sustainability//

So the biggest topic within the agenda in the meeting for this month was Self-Sustainability, specifically within the realm of infrastructure. Though Oddysee has no hard physical locations that we run, we do lease a VPS from a dedicated server company which is used for our Website, forums, Teamspeak (Yes it still exists :P). On top of the VPS that we lease, for the past 7 months Oddysee has leased and maintained an Oddysee ARK server. As you can imagine this is rather costly and the costs have been maintained by officers, a handful of members and myself.

The aforementioned costs do not include the costs that we incur when we run events in terms of giveaways, those so far have also been graciously donated once again by officers, a handful of members and myself. While personally it brings my joy that people make use of the services that we offer it is rather costly. As such to not only ease the financial strain on the individuals mentioned above we have come up with some of the following solutions. (Don’t worry none of the options will ever stop any of you from enjoying content and getting freebies!)

The solutions are as follows:

Raffles
Raffle Ticketed events
Branded Merchandise
Member opted Donations

//Raffles//

This solution is a rather straightforward solution, this will give the members a chance to support the group whilst also getting the chance to win games. As per usual administration will not be allowed to win the prizes purely just for fairness. The way that these will work will be we will have it broken down to two categories donators and participants.

We would never leave any of those who are unable to donate behind because without you guys we wouldn’t have gotten this far, let alone be a community. When we run raffles, we will have some that active members may participate in to win prizes. That’s it. No obligation other than being a part of Oddysee!

For those who donate as a reward for being extra helpful we will have higher tiered raffles so they may win games and prizes. These donator only raffles will end up being held more often than the precursor as donators will be the ones who end up funding the prizes in these pools!

//Raffle Ticketed Events//

Much like the raffles this will be broken down into a few tiers (3 to be exact!) and it will be based on when we run events. We will have 3 different pools that people can be a part of. As follows;

Non-Oddysee Member (Bronze)
Oddysee Member (Silver)
Oddysee Donator (Gold)

This means that when we host an event we will purchase prizes depending on the donations we’ve received. 70% of all donations for that event will go back into directly buying prizes for that event. Ultimately the way that the prizes will be distributed across the three tiers in terms of purchasing is; of the 70% that will go back into prizes, 60% of that will be for those members who donated, 30% for Silvers and 10% for non-members, though these numbers are subject to change you will be given heads up if we do! So you might be saying that’s all well and good but what do the three pool tiers mean?

[Bronze]

Before I go into it I’ll start off by saying that Oddysee members will be privy to more goodies just for being a part of the community, as such Oddysee members will always end up getting more than a non-member equivalent. This however, does not mean we discriminate against those who come and be a part of an event if they aren’t an Oddysee member. Anyone who gets involved with Oddysee should, we believe, be reward. As such for events we will have bargain games that we manage to snag up, up for grabs for non-members.

[Silver]

This is for members who just rock up to the event, we love the fact that you turned up to be a part of the events we hold for you guys and as such just for turning up you become eligible for a reward, though this won’t necessarily game or prize it’s still our way of saying thank you.

[Gold]

This is for those members who felt they’d like to donate to the event and have done so. Due to their generosity, we’d like to reward them with the chance to win better prizes as effectively they are paying for the events prizes across the board. Pretty standards stuff right?

//Branded Merchandise//

We’ve been talking about this for ages but now we’re finally going to do it! We’re looking at options such as tee’s, mugs, dog tags etc.

The way that we hope to make money off of these is we will have a set date by which we hope to get interest for a certain item back and then bulk order. Save some money there and do a slight mark up so that we can net some profit so that we can sink it back into website, events and contests.

It won’t be the biggest way we get the money to sink back into you guys but hey, you get to have some cool Oddysee swag along the way right? Always cool.

//Member Opted Donations//

This particular option was actually implemented late last year! Visit our donation page here if you’re feeling and just donate! That’s all there is to it! Donations, however much they are a greatly appreciated. Seriously.

//Disclaimer//

As with all things that involve money we need a disclaimer, all money that we raise through this will go straight back into funding Oddysee, this can be in terms of Web hosting, Server hosting and Event costs. In the situation that we have pre-purchased items money will also go back into minimizing ONLY the out of pocket cost that has been incurred. None of the money shall be personally profited from by any of the administration team including myself.

All money raised will be used purely to benefit the group Oddysee and will operate as a not for profit club. Should this be changed people will be notified through a future notice.

Donation status will not be used to discriminate ranks within Oddysee and is purely seen as goodwill. (Which we are incredibly thankful for!)

//Closing//

Now that all that icky disclaimer stuff has been taken care of, I’d like to finish off by thanking you all for making it through this massive post, and I and the rest of the team hope you all have had an excellent holidays and all the best for 2016!!

Kind Regards

Cykhat